How the craziest f#@!ing “theory of everything” got published and promoted – UPDATED

A faculty member at a prominent research university has published a grandiose …

Physicists have been working for decades on a "theory of everything," one that unites quantum mechanics and relativity. Apparently, they were being too modest. Yesterday saw publication of a press release claiming a biologist had just published a theory accounting for all of that—and handling the origin of life and the creation of the Moon in the bargain. Better yet, no math!

Where did such a crazy theory originate? In the mind of a biologist at a respected research institution, Case Western Reserve University Medical School. Amazingly, he managed to get his ideas published, then amplified by an official press release. At least two sites with poor editorial control then reposted the press release—verbatim—as a news story.

Gyres all the way down

The theory in question springs from the brain of one Erik Andrulis, a CWRU faculty member who has a number of earlier papers on fairly standard biochemistry. The new paper was accepted by an open access journal called Life, meaning that you can freely download a copy of its 105 pages if you're so inclined. Apparently, the journal is peer-reviewed, which is a bit of a surprise; even accepting that the paper makes a purely theoretical proposal, it is nothing like science as I've ever seen it practiced.

The basic idea is that everything, from subatomic particles to living systems, is based on helical systems the author calls "gyres," which transform matter, energy, and information. These transformations then determine the properties of various natural systems, living and otherwise. What are these gyres? It's really hard to say; even Andrulis admits that they're just "a straightforward and non-mathematical core model" (although he seems to think that's a good thing). Just about everything can be derived from this core model; the author cites "major phenomena including, but not limited to, quantum gravity, phase transitions of water, why living systems are predominantly CHNOPS (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur), homochirality of sugars and amino acids, homeoviscous adaptation, triplet code, and DNA mutations."

He's serious about the "not limited to" part; one of the sections describes how gyres could cause the Moon to form.

Is this a viable theory of everything? The word "boson," the particle that carries forces, isn't in the text at all. "Quark" appears once—in the title of one of the 800 references. The only subatomic particle Andrulis describes is the electron; he skips from there straight up to oxygen. Enormous gaps exist everywhere one looks.

The theory is supposed to be testable, but the word "test" only shows up in the text twice. In both cases, Andrulis simply claims his theory is testable in specific areas of study. He does not indicate what those tests might be, nor what results would be predicted based on his gyres.

I could easily go into more specifics (very easily—I've got lots of notes), but it's clear that there's nothing in the paper that much resembles science. (Though there's always the chance that I'm just not smart enough to see the model's brilliance.)

Responsibility

How in the world did this get into a peer-reviewed journal? It's not clear. Life is tiny, publishing a single issue with a handful of papers in each of its two years of existence. Many of these papers seem highly speculative, so this paper isn't completely out of line. But it should be clear to just about anyone that there's no clear relationship between this proposed model and reality, something that is fundamental to science. It's hard to imagine why Life's reviewers decided it should pass peer review.

Peer review isn't meant as a way to censor unpopular or radically new ideas. It is meant to ensure that publications meet minimal scientific standards (how minimal will depend on the journal), and it imparts a level of credibility to anything that passes review. As far as I can determine, this paper doesn't meet even minimal scientific standards. By giving it the credibility of having been peer-reviewed anyway, the reviewers arguably failed in their duty.

The paper would almost certainly have languished in obscurity were it not for the fact that the press office at the Case Western chose to publicize it with a press release that repeated many of the paper's most outlandish claims.

A paper like this can put a university's Press Information Officer (PIO) in a tough position. According to a PIO at a major university (who asked to speak without attribution because he works in the field), a PIO can typically recognize when something is off on the fringes of science, and they don't want to promote a story that will damage their institution's credibility.

"We do try to avoid doing stories that we feel could backfire on the institution, but it's not always up to the PIO to say no to a paper that is appearing in a peer-reviewed journal," the PIO told Ars. "Note that she [the Case Western PIO] made the point about peer-review explicitly in the release—that’s a pretty telling detail."

PIOs are put in these awkward situations all the time. Despite the fact that we've discovered numerous fossils of feathered dinosaurs, some researchers still discount the connections between the two. Every few years, one of them gets a new publication, which is almost invariably followed by a press release. That said, support by a press office isn't uniform; Berkeley's biology news aggregator doesn't seem to have anything from Peter Duesberg, a biologist on the faculty there who has views that are quite controversial.

(We contacted Case Western's press office but, as of press time, had not received a reply.)

If the responsibility of press officers can be a bit complicated, the responsibility of news sites isn't. PhysOrg and Science Daily both did what they always do and ran the press release, unedited, as if it were their own original news content. ScienceDaily even added itself as the dateline source.

This wouldn't necessarily be a problem if it weren't for the fact that, in a large number of contexts, these two sites are treated as credible sources of scientific information. Items posted there make frequent appearances on social news sites, and a number of people I've talked to have been shocked to discover that the majority of the sites' content is nothing more than rebranded press releases.

Ultimately, the job of editing and of peer review is to help ensure that only scientifically valid data and ideas end up in the literature. The job of the press should be to ensure that the public only receives reports of equal quality (or better, since the press can act as an additional layer of filtering). Unfortunately, with the rise of the press release, and of aggregators that disguise press releases as news content, the public is not being well served in this regard.

Update: Over the weekend, Case Western Reserve removed the press release from its site, although it remains up at the science PR aggregator Eurekalert. In response, ScienceDaily has also removed its version of the press release (the link above now redirects to the site's front page). The reposted press release is still hosted by PhysOrg.

328 Reader Comments

There's enough scientific evidence to demonstrate that saying "you're wrong" to someone even if that's true does only decreases the odds of having them reflect on it and change their mind and I don't think I'm taking too big of a wagger by saying that you know that. If you're that bored I'd suggest taking advantage of this free time to elaborate a more productive approach .

Edit: fixed broken quoting.

You are absolutely, 100% correct. I won’t contest your comment for a second. There’s more to it though.

To really put my comments in full context a lot more information needs to be made available. First; I like arguing. Have since I was a kid. The topic doesn’t matter. The outcome doesn’t matter. I like the challenge of it. Normally, I put honest-to-$deity conscious effort in restraining myself from this.

The second item of note is that I was right in the middle of probably the worst day I have experienced in about 6 years. I had just been informed that an old friend of mine had died in a car accident, and his wife and kid were in hospital with serious injuries. As he is something like 3500km away, I felt pretty impotent and frustrated.

I was also in the middle of cleaning up the personal user settings, VMs, etc. of a coworkers who committed suicide a few weeks back when the disk arrays on three servers failed simultainiously due to a power spike that apparently killed the UPS so hard it nuked the PSUs on the servers. So I was restoring these three servers from backups, which is a complicated and terrible procedure for a great many technical reasons to boring to get into.

I couldn’t leave until these absolutely critical servers were up, and I couldn’t do anything to fix them but watch progress bars then poke a button every 1/2 hr or so. So here I sit at work, full of frustration and feeling remarkably impotent about my inability to affect any change in the world – personally or professionally – and really all I wanted to do was argue.

Did I know it was pointless and accomplishing nothing? Yes. Was I 100% wrong for trolling a thread on Nobel Intent and douching it up in a way that pretty much is explicitly forbidden? Absolutely.

I didn’t have anything emotionally invested n the argument itself. Indeed, without going back and reading it again, I probably couldn’t even tell you most of what was being debated. (I have already completely forgotten the name of the other guy involved.)

The debate topic and other debater just weren’t relevant. For some values of consideration, it might even be reasonable to say that I wasn’t necessarily in my right mind at the time.

Normally if I am bored I write an article. There is always an article to write. (Or 6. Or 10.) But in this particular instance, writing an article would have been a terrible idea. There was just too much bad juju going on at the time. I was aware there were more constructive things I should be doing; but I was either actively prevented from doing them or unable to trust myself to do them. And against my better judgment I went looking for a fight on the internets.

But none of that is actually relevant. Excuses count for nothing in the real world. I went spoiling for a fight and chose the wrong venue in which to do so. I got smacked by Dr Jay, and 100% rightly. Indeed, he would have been entirely within his rights to hand me a much harsher thrashing than he did. I could have and should have been a lot more diplomatic in my opening statement and certainly given up after the second of third comment when it was 100% clear that the argument was never going to go anywhere.

I did a bad thing. If I felt I could offer any form of apology that would be relevant, I would. Instead, the only thing I can realistically do is bear in mind that I have an unusually large black mark on my history here with the ringing endorsement of “gigantic douchenozzle.”

Over time, I might be able to repay my debt to the community through some hard work at being a productive and beneficial member of the forums. (As always, Wheels of Confusion remains my role model.) There is a lot I will have to do to work off this debt – in my own mind, even if in nobody else’s – but do it I shall.

Maybe he should have used dollars, instead? In the context of that particular exchange, monetary units are arguably as relevant as units of mass or weight (lbs or Kg of CO2, $US of PR-based fertilizer);-)

Some people will trouble themselves to follow up on "explainers", but they will always be a minority -- most of us would rather lose a limb, than change our mind on any matter of substance.

At heart, I am an optimist. I like to be more than a little tongue-in-cheek and play up the "people will never change, we're all doomed" bit in an online forum debate from time to time...but secretly I think we all can. The science is generally against me on this…but the odd fellow (like reflex-croft) wanders along and gives me hope for a better future.

Otherwise, what is the point of a website like Ars Technica? (Or more specifically, Nobel Intent?) Am I to believe that the people writing for her don’t believe that we can educated the masses? That changing only a few minds isn’t worth the effort? Is Nobel Intent nothing more than a cold money grab; a pandering to a certain class of neo-intellectual in order to get their advertising revenue and nothing more?

That’s pretty bleak and dystopian. And truth be told, I don’t have evidence either way. But I choose to believe that the people who write for this site think that they can make a difference. I choose to believe that they go to the lengths they do to make thier level of journalism so above-and-beyond the competition because they feel it is important to do so; because the ethics of the individuals demand it.

I could easily be wrong. But I really don’t want to be. I want to believe that we can bring knowledge to the fuzzy wuzzies. More importantly, I am to believe that I am not the only one who still believes that is possible. The world would seem a sad place were it not true.

There is a serious lack of critical analysis in the writeup of this article... which is a shame, because it was such a good opportunity... and it's now been lost. Number of times the word test appears in a document, indeed.

The Peer-review process for dummies: "Jesus, am I really seeing this? Bill, you see this? Are we really seeing this? Seriously, go get Tom... like, NOW. Somebody should probably be taking pictures of this..."

Gotta back up the OP (frustrated vitriol notwithstanding) on this... if you can't be bothered to do some basic due diligence (bearing in mind the distinct possibility that Tom is an attention-whoring fuck-wit who will tell EVERYONE before the data has been tested) then, regardless of whether your theory is right or wrong, you have no business publishing anything.

I'm getting kind of sick, and I don't think I'm alone in this, of running into the philosphy of "I don't think, therefore, I Spam."

I regret reading these eight pages of comments. I don't think the man is a charlatan or fraud and I don't think his paper was a joke. The logic in his writing is similar to what I've seen from folks on LSD or who have had mental trauma. I think it's shitty that Life published him without giving him a bona fide review, and thus is subjecting him to this scrutiny. I hope he gets better.

I regret reading these eight pages of comments. I don't think the man is a charlatan or fraud and I don't think his paper was a joke. The logic in his writing is similar to what I've seen from folks on LSD or who have had mental trauma. I think it's shitty that Life published him without giving him a bona fide review, and thus is subjecting him to this scrutiny. I hope he gets better.

A charlatan or fraud implies that he doesn't believe what he published. With the exception of the few people who think he might be taking a shot at string theory, I don't think anyone here is suggesting the man doesn't believe what was published.

I'm noticing a recurring "nutty papers" theme in John's articles. I think it is important to emphasize that the audience for whom these papers are intended is perfectly able to interpret them, and are well aware of their various shortcomings. The problem arises when a scientifically-ignorant press and political class gets hold of a fringe paper and promotes it, either to get page views or to promote some political agenda. It is only at this point that anyone gets mislead.

I regret reading these eight pages of comments. I don't think the man is a charlatan or fraud and I don't think his paper was a joke. The logic in his writing is similar to what I've seen from folks on LSD or who have had mental trauma. I think it's shitty that Life published him without giving him a bona fide review, and thus is subjecting him to this scrutiny. I hope he gets better.

I remain hopefully optimistic that it's an intentional fraud, a great prank with some purpose.

One step in such a prank of course would be to get some press coverage.

Hopefully the (Ars) author will give us an update. I mean, what's going on with this guy's colleagues? Has he been committed, is anyone from the department paying him a little visit at the office? It's not like he's working at some community college while staging "A Beautiful Mind" in his garage.

I'm noticing a recurring "nutty papers" theme in John's articles. I think it is important to emphasize that the audience for whom these papers are intended is perfectly able to interpret them, and are well aware of their various shortcomings. The problem arises when a scientifically-ignorant press and political class gets hold of a fringe paper and promotes it, either to get page views or to promote some political agenda. It is only at this point that anyone gets mislead.

Unless it fits some political agenda, not much likelihood. The greater risk is political anti-scientism, even from respected sources. See this article discussing an editorial in the Wall Street Journal ("No Need to Panic About Global Warming: There's no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to 'decarbonize' the world's economy.") and another by the Daily Mail ("Forget Global Warming..."):

In this Limbaugh/Beck/Republican/Tea Party/Religious Right world, it doesn't matter how good the science is if people wilfully ignore and distort it to their own political agendas. Yes, we should uphold the standards (better than we do), but don't kid yourselves that that's going to sway the political debate.

Can anyone here present a cogent argument as to what exactly the flaws in the paper are? "No math" does not count as a real argument, as it doesn't actually preclude his model being logical and rational, it just means he hasn't proven anything yet, and that's not what I'm asking. That much is admitted to in the paper and isn't in dispute. I want to know, specifically, what can be proven or observed today that renders his framework invalid.

Thanks in advance for your level-headed responses; this post may come across as a challenge, but it's actually a genuine question, born of curiosity.

I suspect Schwartz has a chip on his shoulder about the necessity of peer-review because it undermines his belief that vaccines are dangerous.

Wheels, I respectfully suggest you read the new policy on trolling. Shame on you.

Are his suspicions unfounded? Are you indeed an individual possessed of those erroneous and scientifically unsupportable beliefs? If so, then I don’t think that Wheels is at all trolling. Quite the opposite, the information he provided would put your comments in a new light; providing necessary context.

Once a person has made a leap like that – “vaccines are dangerous!” – then all sorts of other factors come into play as to why they wouldn’t believe in peer review. There is a layer of mental gymnastics there that needs a completely different approach. Arguing the science will result in loops as rhetorical argumentation is employed that gets nobody anywhere. (For example, demands on the part of the denier to prove a negative can quickly lead to a loop. "You can't know [blank] becuase we don't know all the things about [blank], thus be default we need to assume [blank]!" God-of-the-gaps by another name...)

So if Wheels is right, and you are firmly entrenched in the belief that Vaccines Are Dangerous, his comment is entirely valid. It tells me that I am facing (bare minimum) strong disconfirmation bias and quite probably cognitive dissonance.

In really extreme cases, you end up with that lovely 16 page thread which featured as the main character an individual possessed of such intense cognitive dissonance that the god-of-the-gaps arguments were almost tangible.

So I don’t think it is fair to suggest Wheels deserves moderation for that comment. It’s not an ad hom attack against you; it is a warning to the rest of us. Maybe not what you want to see someone say, but valid in context.

The appeal to "scientific consensus" is basically a short way to say, "that's already known. Look it up on the literature if you want the details." Explaining all of the lines of evidence for something, and the evidence against all other possibilities, is an exhausting process that would take days if not weeks for most complex fields.

Otherwise, arguing against anything is very easy: just keep arguing point after point, nitpicking detail after detail until the other side gets tired of looking up information in the literature and gives up. At some point you have to say that X is known, but you'll have to look it up yourself.

The argument of "scientific consensus" is simple to verify: look it up. It's perfectly scientific, because the evidence backs it up. Oh sure, that requires effort on your part. But every person who puts forth a position should not have to continuously defend every tiny detail that every individual person wants to nitpick. At some point, it's just not worth the time to refute it.

I also call it lazy. Certainly one can make a case for saving some time, but don't pretend it's a logical argument. The world is hardly black and white, and neither is the world of science. Even in "consensus" topics, the evidence in science is rarely definitive. It is not uncommon for studies to draw conclusions that far outreach the evidence presented or observed so pointing to the title of a study and claiming "evidence" doesn't always cut it.

Taken to the extreme, such an approach precludes any challenge to consensus opinion. As I said, call it whatever you want, but don't claim it's a logical argument.

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If a person making the negative claim wants the benefit of the doubt, then they have to show good faith. And that means looking stuff up in the literature, rather than expecting the specific person he's talking to to refute the point on the spot with referenced material and arguments. Otherwise, you're just a denialist.

I agree, one making a claim should show good faith by looking stuff up and providing concrete arguments. I think that is exactly what some people here are complaining about in the OP although to be fair, I understood the main focus of Jon's piece was actually the process of peer review, not the piece itself.

Of course, my comment related to past articles, and in those cases, it is this column here that is making a negative claim against something putting the onus on the author to provide more arguments than just "scientific consensus".

None of this changes my main point, that peer-review is not equivalent to evidence, and frankly, neither is scientific consensus.

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It's interesting. You're complaining about Timmer making an argument based on authority. Yet your argument here is no less based on authority. You cite no sources for any of this, no actual research done on peer-reviewed papers, nothing. It's all about what "my experience has shown me."

Except the big difference is I presented that quite clearly as an opinion. Perhaps you missed the opening of that part: "That is your opinion. I disagree". In fact, not only did I present backup for my opinion, I relayed what is considered common knowledge when it comes to credentials and employment. If you disagree with some of those points -- I'll note you didn't actually point out anything you disagreed -- I respectfully suggest you follow your own advice, go read some literature on hiring best practices, and come back and have an honest discussion.

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A better question would be "why are you arguing a point that he didn't make?" He didn't say "non-peer reviewed stuff is garbage. He said that it was garbage if certain conditions were not met.

Did you read his whole argument? He was arguing against the use of any non-peer reviewed information (Zeotherm already pointed that out as well) and he made that statement to back it up. So either he assumes peer-reviewed information never contains reviewable evidence (which is what I inferred) or his argument was non sequitor. I thought I was being more charitable in my assumption and asked a question in clarification.

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The fact that you consider this difference to be trivial is the problem. Virtually any aspect of human endeavor immediately becomes more accurate when more than one knowledgeable person is looking over the results. Whether it is "scientific" or whatever word you want to put on it is irrelevant. It is more reliable, and therefore should be relied upon more than information that hasn't been vetted.

You imply that non-peer reviewed publications aren't read by anyone but the author prior to publication. The only difference is that the peer-reviewed publication has guaranteed a certain number of reviewers. The doesn't mean non-peer reviewed publication hasn't had any peer-review. Many self publishing authors have reviewers. Also, you can't say the information is more scientifically reliable. On an average basis, you can assume that the publication process is more reliable, but like I said, that only gaurantees the basics. It's not really the basics that we're interested in. The rest is in the details.

Can anyone here present a cogent argument as to what exactly the flaws in the paper are? "No math" does not count as a real argument, as it doesn't actually preclude his model being logical and rational, it just means he hasn't proven anything yet, and that's not what I'm asking. That much is admitted to in the paper and isn't in dispute. I want to know, specifically, what can be proven or observed today that renders his framework invalid.

Thanks in advance for your level-headed responses; this post may come across as a challenge, but it's actually a genuine question, born of curiosity.

Biggest one? No predictions, no testability. I can write a paper saying that buffalo from the great plains of pixie-dust created the universe and create a pillar of logic to support it. But unless I can make predictions with my hypothesis that can then be tester experimentally, it simply isn't science. It is religion. It is like arguing "god did it."

Second issue? It skims over mountains of extant evidence. The problem any new theory faces is that it has to make sense given the evidence we already have about how things work. In essence; if you want to rewrite the standard model, you have to explain how we achieved all the experimental results we have to date.

There are enormous gaps in this paper. How can there not be? It’s not very long. And that’s a problem; you could stand there and say “well, we need to fund research into this so that we can figure out how this theory can address extant evidence” until the end of time.

So could I, with my buffalo-pixies-won’t-you-come-home-tonight hypothesis.

It’s an occam’s razor thing. What we have for an understanding of the universe mostly works. We got there with a lot of hard work. If you want to overturn that then more power to you; but you have to explain A) how your idea makes more sense and B) how we can test to prove that your idea is true. Preferably in a fashion that demonstrably proves that the orthodox viewpoint is false.

So it really suffers from complete and utter inadequacy. It’s the start of a religion. No different than Terry Brooks’ Word/Void/Landover/Shanarra multiverse, except that Terry Brooks spent a longer time crafting his, and in some places it makes more sense.

Until then, it’s buffalo-pixies by a fancier name that someone has put a great deal of thought into, but not quite enough.

Can anyone here present a cogent argument as to what exactly the flaws in the paper are? "No math" does not count as a real argument, as it doesn't actually preclude his model being logical and rational, it just means he hasn't proven anything yet, and that's not what I'm asking. That much is admitted to in the paper and isn't in dispute. I want to know, specifically, what can be proven or observed today that renders his framework invalid.

Thanks in advance for your level-headed responses; this post may come across as a challenge, but it's actually a genuine question, born of curiosity.

He states that everything is controlled by gyres and his hypothesis contains no way to prove or disprove the existence of these gyres as well as giving no theoretical backing for their existence.

His paper is basically 105 pages of how everything is determined by helical spinning things, just trust him on this.

A peer reviewed document is not in itself evidence. But it contains evidence. The difference between a peer reviewed document and one that isn’t is not “that a peer reviewed document contains multiple opinions.” It is that it contains actual evidence. It contains the hard data, descriptions of experiments with the results. Numbers, facts and figures and how they were crunched to get the analyses in question.

I think you've finally gotten the point. Peer reviewed documents are not equivalent to evidence. Thank you for finally admitting you got it wrong. In case you forgot this was your original statement: "I don't believe much of anything unless there is evidence. But what constitutes evidence? A peer reviewed paper is my general standard."

Case closed? Unfortunately...

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A peer reviewed document is not in itself evidence. But it contains evidence. The difference between a peer reviewed document and one that isn’t is not “that a peer reviewed document contains multiple opinions.” It is that it contains actual evidence. It contains the hard data, descriptions of experiments with the results. Numbers, facts and figures and how they were crunched to get the analyses in question.

That's called moving the goalpost. But here's a hint for you: Some non-peer reviewed papers contain all the same things you noted. Some peer-reviewed papers omit many or all of the things you stated above. As Zeotherm already pointed out more eloquently than me, your arguments fall flat down because you back them up with indefensible absolute statements.

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So tell me very explicitly which of these two things you are trying to say is true:

1) Peer review is pointless, the only way to know anything is to do the experiment yourself, learn all the knowledge yourself and do all the studies of everything yourself. Trust noone, ever, about anything; somehow you will magically be able to understand the entire universe all on your own if you just work hard enough. (Where you get the funding to do all of the science on your own is up to you! I mean, wait, you aren’t an independent trillionaire? What? Those people exist? I had no idea…) This is a god of the gaps argument in different clothing. (We can't know everything, so we might as well not trust what little we do know!)

2) Peer review is pointless because it is just an opinion, and the guy anchoring FOX News’ opinion is just as valid. You really should listen to it and judge for yourself. Because science is just opinions. And Fox News is opinions. So they are really the same. Really! This is an interestingly twisted "appeal to authority." (In that "all authorities are valid, so who you choose an authority doesn't matter. So long as it agrees with what you already believe."

And that is a strawman. I suggest re-reading my posts for comprehension.

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And it has the stamp of multiple scientists, each of whose records can be reviewed, their credibility assessed, and so forth.

Just out of curiosity, where are the stamps of the reviewers for the article outlined in this OP? How exactly does one go about assessing their credibility? The reading public would love to know.

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Either one of those two is cracked, sir. Completely and utterly.

I will accept that a peer reviewed paper is not of itself evidence. It is a paper. It is evidence only that a paper exists. But the paper itself contains evidence. And it has the stamp of multiple scientists, each of whose records can be reviewed, their credibility assessed, and so forth.

So yes, a little critical thinking need to be applied if you are going to invest money/faith/emotion into believing what’s behind a given paper, but by the same token:

A) No human being currently alive can possibly become a true polymath. The scope of human knowledge is far too vast.B) The opinion of a drooling halfwit anchoring FOX News does not – I repeat does not – possess equal validity to a peer reviewed article.

It is theoretically possible that the opinion of an individual – or an opinion expressed in a non-peer-reviewed document – could have the same validity as that of a properly peer-reviewed document. However, that would be because the individual penning that document was possessed of the same intellectual honesty, ethics and scientific rigour as those who publish documents for peer review. At that point, that document should be peer reviewed and enter the literature.

But there is a huge wall of difference between “THE SOCIALISTS ARE TAKING OUR MUNEE!!!111!!111oenoneoen” (an opinion you would hear on FOX News) and “the Earth’s temperature has risen by a global average of 2 degrees C over the past 50 years. Here is our data, the analyses we used, previous studies we have referenced and incorporated into our analyses, and references to other studies conducted on other datasets that reach the same or broadly similar conclusions.”

One is an opinion backed by insanity, good drugs, fear, propaganda, brainwashing or all of the above. The other is the conclusion of a peer reviewed scientific paper backed by evidence.

Peer review has its place in establishing validity. Not because “having someone check your work” is the ultimate arbiter, but because the entire peer review system (for the most part) contains checks and balances to ensure that what is published

A) Has some scientific underpinnings. Statistical analyses or experimental evidence.B) Starts out with a hypothesis, sets out to prove it in some fashion.C) Comes to some form of conclusion on the data. Even that is “well, we actually learned absolutely nothing from this.”D) Is reviewed by other folks who check for the above and then go “yep, meets the criteria.”

That is different than “an opinion.” “An opinion” doesn’t need to meet any criteria at all. It can be created by rolling your face around on the keyboard and declaring it The New Truth.

You propose “faith in the authors” as the only filter for determining who is right and who is wrong. The problem with your approach is that this has lead to the greatest tragedies in all of human history.

“My daddy/preacher/instructor/politician/drill sergeant/your mom/etc told me that blacks are slave/Jews are evil/Tutsis are inferior to Hutus/global warming is a lie/9\11 was an inside job/vaccines cause autism/socialists are evil/so on an so forth.”

Are you cracked? “Who you believe” is – in your world – more important than “what you believe” and “how you arrived at that belief"? Are you honestly and truly typing this into Nobel Intent and expecting us to buy it? Am I reading you right? You are arguing faith in the source over any attempt at imposing evidentiary requirements.

You are functionally making the argument that wattsup.com is logically equivalent to peer reviewed science so long as you “trust Watt and the people he in turn trusts.” Because that trust is entirely a supplement for “standards of evidence and procedure.”

A self-correcting peer review system should in your mind be replaced by faith in the individual.

Next up; have sex with me. I am your leader, and God told me that I should bed 18 virgins tonight. Tomorrow the FBI will be here and we will resist them by having a massive orgy then drinking the kool-aid!

Are his suspicions unfounded? Are you indeed an individual possessed of those erroneous and scientifically unsupportable beliefs? If so, then I don’t think that Wheels is at all trolling. Quite the opposite, the information he provided would put your comments in a new light; providing necessary context.

When you can find the word vaccine in any of my arguments here I'll be happy to respond to your red herring. I respectfully suggest you too review the trolling guidelines on taking the discussion well off topic.

Can anyone here present a cogent argument as to what exactly the flaws in the paper are? "No math" does not count as a real argument, as it doesn't actually preclude his model being logical and rational, it just means he hasn't proven anything yet, and that's not what I'm asking. That much is admitted to in the paper and isn't in dispute. I want to know, specifically, what can be proven or observed today that renders his framework invalid.

Thanks in advance for your level-headed responses; this post may come across as a challenge, but it's actually a genuine question, born of curiosity.

...

Second issue? It skims over mountains of extant evidence. The problem any new theory faces is that it has to make sense given the evidence we already have about how things work. In essence; if you want to rewrite the standard model, you have to explain how we achieved all the experimental results we have to date.

...

maxspire, its a good question and others have touched on it, but I'll ++ Astlor's second point as the big one. If you (the royal you) is going to come in and propose a new theory of X it had better be able to reproduce what old theory of X did and then more. I.e. general relativity breaks down to "simple" Newtonian mechanics in a flat spacetime metric. This paper does nothing of the sort all while making grandiose claims as to how it should supercede everything.

You're veering away into all sorts of off-topic ad homenims here. This thread has already been derailed by such once; if you want to continue with this, I suggest sending me a private message. Less inconvenience for everyone else, especially as the arguments appear to be getting very circular.

Edit:

I’d like to add a bit just to make sure my position here is crystal clear, and won’t be taken out of context. Hopefully this will satisfy the semantic and pedantic arguments.

Goal: To acquire knowledge beyond my areas of expertise.Foundational assumption: I cannot learn all things about all subjects which are relevant to me through direct experimentation.Choice: Give up on my goal, or determine a reliable source of knowledge. (I choose finding a reliable source of knowledge.)<research into various knowledge dissemination mechanisms occurs here>Conclusion: Because of its inbuilt correction mechanisms, peer review presents a signal-to-noise ratio so significantly above all other candidates knowledge dissemination systems analyzed that it renders said other knowledge dissemination systems functionally invalid.Outcome: Given the above, treat peer reviewed papers as logically equivalent to evidence*. Addendum: The above is not a perfect method for determining Truth. Some Truth will slip through the cracks, and some UnTruth will be mistaken for truth. Unfortunately, at this time no individual or organization has been able to present a realistic** alternative methodology for Understanding Things that offers even a comparable signal-to-noise ratio, let alone one that is superior.

* Peer reviewed papers are not themselves evidence. Instead, they contain evidence. But for nearly all purposes I have, they’ll do. If issues arise wherein I need to question a peer-reviewed paper for any reason, I then review it in depth, check references and do hard analysis on said paper (and any associated items as required.)

** See foundational assumption.

I remain open to alternatives if/when/where they present themselves. If you have a superior methodology for Understanding Things with a superior signal-to-noise ratio, please share. Self-improvement in this area is one of my goals.

There is a nice bottle of scotch in it for anyone who can modify the above system in such a manner that the paper discussed in the article can be made to seem a superior alternative to existing consensus science. (If for no other reason than that I think “gyres” sounds a hell of a lot cooler than “the standard model.”)

Can anyone here present a cogent argument as to what exactly the flaws in the paper are? "No math" does not count as a real argument, as it doesn't actually preclude his model being logical and rational, it just means he hasn't proven anything yet, and that's not what I'm asking. That much is admitted to in the paper and isn't in dispute. I want to know, specifically, what can be proven or observed today that renders his framework invalid.

Thanks in advance for your level-headed responses; this post may come across as a challenge, but it's actually a genuine question, born of curiosity.

Biggest one? No predictions, no testability. I can write a paper saying that buffalo from the great plains of pixie-dust created the universe and create a pillar of logic to support it. But unless I can make predictions with my hypothesis that can then be tester experimentally, it simply isn't science. It is religion. It is like arguing "god did it."

Second issue? It skims over mountains of extant evidence. The problem any new theory faces is that it has to make sense given the evidence we already have about how things work. In essence; if you want to rewrite the standard model, you have to explain how we achieved all the experimental results we have to date.

There are enormous gaps in this paper. How can there not be? It’s not very long. And that’s a problem; you could stand there and say “well, we need to fund research into this so that we can figure out how this theory can address extant evidence” until the end of time.

So could I, with my buffalo-pixies-won’t-you-come-home-tonight hypothesis.

It’s an occam’s razor thing. What we have for an understanding of the universe mostly works. We got there with a lot of hard work. If you want to overturn that then more power to you; but you have to explain A) how your idea makes more sense and B) how we can test to prove that your idea is true. Preferably in a fashion that demonstrably proves that the orthodox viewpoint is false.

So it really suffers from complete and utter inadequacy. It’s the start of a religion. No different than Terry Brooks’ Word/Void/Landover/Shanarra multiverse, except that Terry Brooks spent a longer time crafting his, and in some places it makes more sense.

Until then, it’s buffalo-pixies by a fancier name that someone has put a great deal of thought into, but not quite enough.

"Biggest one? No predictions, no testability."Nope. Not sufficient to discount the paper. Just cause he didn't include it doesn't mean you can't make predictions using it. I'm not say you actually can if you apply his gyres but that doesn't mean he or someone has to do all the work for you.

Same for your second issue. It may be a sloppy paper but it doesn't mean the theory is wrong.

Third yes there are enormous gaps in his paper.

Fourth, Occam's razor is irrelevant.

Why don't you or someone go through it line by line and write a good review?

Why don't you or someone go through it line by line and write a good review?

Honest answer? Because that is quite possibly a thesis in and of itself. Certainly, it is the foundation for a hell of a peer-reviewed paper. So I won't speak for anyone else, but here are my reasons:A) I lack a university degree of any qualification. No matter how amazing the paper I write, my chances of having it published anywhere except my own blog are functionally non-existent.B) Nobody is paying me to write it. To do that right is at least a month's worth of part-time work. If I was going to spend a month's worth of my evenings doing research and then writing articles, I am going to get paid for it. My editor pays me to write computer nerd stuff. He doesn’t pay me to write about science, philosophy or religion.

When I get the urge to write on the topic, I end up here in the Ars Technica forums, whiling my time away for you lot. “Publishing” the result of a month’s worth of research and writing in this particular back alley of the internet isn’t going to advance my career as a sysadmin, my career as a writer or gain me the clients I need to make the new company I just started enough money to pay the salaries of myself and my two business partners.

As interesting a challenge as you pose, the above is just the facts of life.

Edit: the above also is why I am not rebutting the rest of your comment. I've done my arguing; the others will step in here I am sure.

You're veering away into all sorts of off-topic ad homenims[sic] here. This thread has already been derailed by such once; if you want to continue with this, I suggest sending me a private message. Less inconvenience for everyone else, especially as the arguments appear to be getting very circular.

@Astlor,

I guess you had to part with a nonsensical statement. If find it infinitely humorous that you accuse me of ad hominem argument when I wrote no such thing. Given the personal abuse you dish out, the irony is thick. Believe what you will.

As for your thesis, it's pretty clear your methodology is significantly closed minded. As for signal to noise, I suggest you review your own posts as examples of such a problem.

I guess you had to part with a nonsensical statement. If find it infinitely humorous that you accuse me of ad hominem argument when I wrote no such thing. Given the personal abuse you dish out, the irony is thick. Believe what you will.

As for your thesis, it's pretty clear your methodology is significantly closed minded. As for signal to noise, I suggest you review your own posts as examples of such a problem.

Throughout this whole thread you have done nothing but make evidenceless statements, dodged every question put to you and dissembled. You even - in the same comment! - proclaim that you make no ad hom arguments while calling me "closed minded."

I have posted my methodology for learning about the world. You call it "significantly closed minded" while offering no alternatives. (Oh, you like to say "go read my previous posts," but they don't offer anything clear either. More dodging.) If your approach to life, the universe and everything is so very deeply superior to mine own, then elucidate it in plain English.

You have the opportunity to change my entire approach to life. How I think about the universe, gather knowledge and evaluate evidence and individuals. Right here, right now. I can not possibly be more open minded than that.

So…do so! I have explained how I think, and why. Offer an alternative. Demonstrate that your alternative is clearly superior. Explain in detail how you achieve a higher signal-to-noise ratio than I do by believing in the process of peer review.

Put up, shut up, or take the whole thing into private messages. Just don’t sit there making ad hom attacks without offering alternatives backed by some form of evidence.

The concepts under discussion here – how do we evaluate what is true and what is not – are core to the article, and to the paper that this article discusses. I think it is worth all our time to see what your proposed alternative solution is. Who knows, you may convert us all to a new way of thinking and begin ushering in a new dawn of civilization.

Everyone generally says that "Well the individual(s) must decide truth for themselves", but is that a feasible answer, if the problem becomes the individual(s)? Everything seems to be going in this general direction. More and more theories based on nothing, and more importantly connected to other theories that in themselves are not connected anything whatsoever or valid for the point they are trying to support. THIS is why good scientists have been throwing their hands up and quitting, or more importantly joining others in something they do not believe whatsoever. When someone actually cares about something, they are generally fighting an uphill battle simply because of EXISTING funding and mindsets. With instantly available debunking in this day and age that is mostly garbage, it is greatly more difficult to get things moving, and when you add financial restraints into this, it becomes seemingly impossible. We will only see more of this as things narrow in the world of today. This is an already Idiocrazy world we are living in, and it's snowballing. Someone really needs to make a TV show on that movie. The content is endless, and truth.

"Anyone who actually read the entire paper should find it to be no more outlandish or poorly proven than most of the work done around String theory or branes. "

"I never read the paper, just as I suspect, most of you have not either. However, that being said, how is a gyre any less scientific than a super-string? Off the top, it sounds the same to me. Next, was this paper a tongue-in-cheek affair done to poke fun at super-strings? "This and this... It's actually not technically 'string theory' that is seriously discussed. M theory or branes are more accurate.

"The only thing that comes to mind is a phrase that I heard a few years ago, that applies to pseudo-scientific claims that are so far off that they can't even be debated: "Not even wrong!" "And this, too!

String theory follows from the math, which is the opposite of the normal way physical theories are normally done. You usually observe results, make a model, and then try to create math that makes predictions based on the model. GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out) applies here. The feedback in the scientific method filters out the nonsense and eventually leaves the simplest possible theory that reasonably describes a system. For example, if I want to calculate a trajectory when firing a cannon, I'd just use the parabola to get a decent estimate.

This following from the math is a big beef that a lot of people have started to complain about. You can't test it if it's accurate becuase the information would exist outside our frame of reference even if measurable. We're only able to see the 3D space, it's on an incredibly small and possibly noisy (read: multiverse?) scale, and it might even be impossible in principle to observe something on that scale regardless of if it was in purely 3D space thanks to quantum physics. However, the math logically follows from the properties of fundemental particles. m^2 = n^2+(n-1)^2+...+1 is a formula that crept up on physicists. There is also the Beta function. See "Beta_function_(physics)" on Wikipedia. Note that the discovery of the positron was predicted because of math ("Dirac's holes"). Oddly, the concept also applies to semiconductors... Read the article on Dirac Equations to see more background. Beware the matrices and integrals, though!

"Can anyone here present a cogent argument as to what exactly the flaws in the paper are? "No math" does not count as a real argument, as it doesn't actually preclude his model being logical and rational, it just means he hasn't proven anything yet, and that's not what I'm asking. That much is admitted to in the paper and isn't in dispute. I want to know, specifically, what can be proven or observed today that renders his framework invalid.

Thanks in advance for your level-headed responses; this post may come across as a challenge, but it's actually a genuine question, born of curiosity. "Astlor and zeotherm kind of covered it, here's my take. BTW, the helical theory is about the same age as the timecube theory so that was my attempt at a little humor earlier.

Well think of it this way: Without building on work building on work.... where every step of the way is tested, and then claiming that it is a good theory. No sane person would accept that kind of logic unless it's their belief system they adopted or grew up on. It (literally) asks for a lot of faith to just accept his ideas as remotely close to reality. A funny concept is that if some physics theories are correct, then his theory is also correct in some other existance. It's just unlikely to be in ours. This is otherwise known as the rationalist view or banality. No pixies here! ;)

The mention of vaccines is in reference in to a uniquely flawed process that allowed mercury to get into the vaccine. This was just a fluke and hasn't happened since. There was some guy discouraging people in Australia to get vaccines in order to prevent health problems which is freaking ironic considering the potential of diseases causing mental health problems much more often than vaccines EVER did, even in the worse case of contamination with heavy metals. Oh yeah, and those death and physical disability things. Polio syndrome, much?

@mikeAsking everyone to know how a car works is not needed to drive. People used yeast bread dough for centuries before they discovered that it was little cells related to mushrooms. We however expect that the specialists who make cars work should not just assume that the theory is correct and send us to our deaths when a car fails to function as described in the manual. Say, if the accelerator was stuck. People who make sourdough starters had BETTER understand that their early batches are kind of diseased and that normal yeast is practically useless for a starter due to genetics. They are not resistant to the lactose that sourdough bacteria make.

I suspect that the whole thing is actually an experiment of memetics, and that the guy is actually tracking how his crazy idea spreads across the internet, similar to when Sheldon and Amy announce they're pregnant, just to see how fast the gossip spreads. You'll probably find a boring control statement by the same guy out there somewhere on the net.

Second, there is no friggin way that most of the population can begin to understand this dense, heterodox paper.

Third, it is far more fun to mock something radically new, then to struggle to understand it.

What follows I have posted in parts on other sites. I don't want to put too much effort into adding much new because the list of comments is so long, so please forgive any redundancies with what you may have seen elsewhere.

The paper is genuine. I know because I have read it and previous versions — plus and enormity of additional, related material. (Louis, yeah, there is a heck of a lot more.)

The paper is heterodox and VERY dense, so naturally most people will take the intellectually lazy route and just mock it.

CWRU acted in a cowardly fashion by taking down its press release. According to Erik, its press office was bullied by two physicists who were “embarrassed” (threatened really) that a non-physicist would dare to trespass in their sacred territory. Science is about defending the status quo — and getting grants that support pet theories.

I have spent several YEARS in conversations with Erik about the paper (and related material). He has made corrections and revisions and has made coherent arguments.

I have advanced degrees in science, and those, coupled with my many discussions with Erik give me a distinct advantage in understanding this paper.

If any serious reader wants to understand this paper, he or she will have to read it several times — if only to get a notion of what it is about.

A.EOTOE is an Embarrassingly Obvious Theory Of Everything.In essence it states that all things in the universe, nouns and verbs objects and processes, originate and derive from the energy-mass dualism.Origin and essence of this derivation are expressed mathematically byE=Total[m(1+ D)] (D = distance travelled by mass since singularity)